Yay! My memoir just hit Amazon in both paperback and hardcover editions! If you look closely you’ll see that I am offering a special deal through my own Amazon Seller account. If you order from me through Amazon you’ll get an autographed card or bookmark, shipped directly from me to you! The book will ship from my publisher (Lulu).
Just look over to the right of this post, second column from the right. Click on “Best Price” to go straight to the page that offers the above mentioned autograph package. It’s that simple!
I am pleased to announce that at 10:00 AM Central today I will be doing my first official interview for the book! The Odd Mind, hosted by AngelLesa at BlogTalkRadio.com, is an internet talk radio show about all things publishing. I’ve listened to several of their shows live now, but the real fun is in the archives.
It’s a good thing too, because I’ve pretty much dropped the ball on promoting this appearance! Of course, because it’s my first live interview, this may be a good thing. Oh well. I’m truly looking forward to pointing all of my readers to the archived show with my interview!
Come and listen! Even if you miss the live show, you can find the entire thing in the archives—so relax, and take your time. Now somebody tell me that, hurry!
That’s right, this is the official video trailer for my book Five Years in Hawaii: A True Saga of International Adventure and the U.S. Naval Intelligence Community.
The book is curently available as an $8 download, or as a very nice jacketed hardcover for quite a bit more. In roughly 8 weeks the book will be available via Amazon.com (ISBN: 978-1-4357-6034-9) and other online retailers. Hopefully by October the book will also be on the shelves of bookstores in selected markets.
For more information on my book Five Years in Hawaii, visit lulu.com or click over to the Read My Books page of this blog—the link is just to the right there.
It’s an odd sort of thing when a major milestone in your life passes by so quietly that even you do not realize it has happened. When I graduated from high school back in 1998, two things were certain. The first was that I had no clue what in the hell I was going to do with my life. The second was that if I didn’t figure it out quickly, I knew I would be in danger of becoming a layabout who would rapidly descend into dementia.
Having grown up in a small, rural city in Western Colorado, I had always known that whatever I did it would have to take me out of my hometown. There just weren’t any opportunities for me here. Sure, if you counted flipping burgers at McDonald’s or working for minimum wage at the mall as opportunities, then I most definitely could have stayed here in Grand Junction. But I had always performed well on standardized tests like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and I knew that I was capable of more.
While in high school I was very much against the military as an option for me. I had heard stories of the kinds of people one encounters in the military, and I wanted no part of it. Once upon a time there were programs in place that were designed to give convicted criminals one last chance before slamming the steel bars of a prison cell closed on them. One of those programs allowed would be inmates to serve their sentences in the military rather than in prison. Hooray!
Plus, the few people I had known in school that had gone the military route were mostly all assholes. It’s true, they were the idiot jocks who had tons of anger to release and zero brains to do it with. They were the kids that the Truancy Officers of our local police department knew by name. They were the kids I never hung out with, so why would I want to go fight battles with them, I thought?
But alas, rapidly declining relations with my family would change things abruptly. After a half-hearted suicide attempt, which left me locked up in our hospital for roughly a week for “evaluation,” I was looking for the fastest ride out of our valley. So it was that I headed over to the office building where all four of the main branches of our military handled their Western Colorado recruiting assignments. I didn’t even know which branch I was interested in.
I knew without a doubt that I didn’t want to be a Marine. It was well known even to a young civilian such as myself at the time that they were treated the worst of the four services and often were sent to be the first ones to die in a conflict. I was not anywhere near patriotic enough for that back in ‘98. The Air Force had always seemed elitist to me. You don’t generally hear stories about Airman So-and-so. It was the pilots who had all the glory with the Air Force, and to be a pilot you had to have a sheepskin.
I knew from school that the Army and the Navy were the two oldest branches of the American military. They had been around since, and indeed had played a vital role in, the very establishment of this land as an independent nation. I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about the Navy and the image of the brainwashed Marine did not apply to the Army in my young man’s mind, so I decided that it would have to be either the Army or the Navy for me.
When I got to the army office, they were bubbling over with potential recruits. The poor bastards who sat two doors down in the Navy office had but a single recruit candidate hanging about, and he had been put to work. I knew right away that if I sat down in the Army office I would have to talk to other kids about why I was doing what I was doing, and I didn’t feel like being scrutinized for what I was hoping would simply be taken as a wise and patriotic move. So it was that I entered the Navy’s recruiting office for Western Colorado back in August of 1998.
On October 6th 1998 I boarded a plane and made my way to boot camp. It happened that fast. In boot camp I managed to stay out of trouble, mostly. I graduated with the same division that I was first assigned to, which at least seemed to be somewhat of a rarity in Great Lakes. Just before graduation from boot camp I contracted either Pneumonia or the worst case of Influenza that I have ever encountered in my life. I don’t’ know for sure what it was because I never went to have it checked out. Visits to medical could put a recruit on hold for weeks, or even months.
I completed my training school sick as hell as a result, but somehow I still managed to graduate #1 in my class. This afforded me early promotion to E-2 just before I flew to Hawaii to assume my duties aboard the USS Reuben James. I would be stationed aboard the James for 18 months, making two deployments to 11 countries located on three continents. Upon my promotion to E-4 I became an official member of the Naval intelligence community and departed the James for the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific. Lucky for me, this was also in Hawaii.
While at JICPAC I watched 9/11 unfold live, not on our fancy government computers, but on Fox News. When that happened my intelligence career was put on hiatus. It just so happened that while awaiting my security clearance I had been sent through the Navy’s Security Region Hawaii Auxiliary Security Force Academy (read: Reserve Police Academy). Because the country was suddenly thrust into a state of war, there was an immediate need for warm bodies who could fill security checkpoint gaps. So it was that I began a five month side career as a military police officer.
When all of that died down I returned to JICPAC to complete my time in the Navy as a North Korea tactical analyst. When my time came to either reenlist or to discharge, I chose to try my luck back in the civilian world. This is a decision that I have pondered ever since. For reasons that would take far too long to go over here, I was growing wary of my Navy. The charm and mystique were wearing off, and I felt like I had been more often persecuted by my organization than applauded.
I had also heard stories of huge salaries that were being paid by civilian companies like Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, and SAIC to veterans. If the stories were true, I felt that a job similar to my duties in the Navy was waiting for me, along with fair compensation for my dedication and loyalty. So I took the plunge. I applied for a job in Washington D.C. with SAIC and they hired me at $45k per year. That was the closing chapter in the book of my Navy career.
I’ve written a book about my time in the service, the working title for which is Five Years in Hawaii. I’ve mentioned it many times before on this blog. The process of publication is a slow and arduous one. Progress is being made, but meanwhile another phase of my life is steadily moving forward. I’m not with SAIC anymore, in fact that barely lasted a month. I’ve since returned to my hometown in Western Colorado and become a family man with two amazing children! It’s funny how quickly time passes.
Two days ago I reached a major milestone in my life, and I didn’t even know it. On August 1st of 2008 the clock on my civilian life rolled past the five year mark. I’ve now been a civilian again for longer than I was in the Navy. This is sad and exciting all at once. I have to admit, a feeling of sad regret rose up in my belly when I finally realized that the milestone had passed. Back in my Navy days I was a career minded professional. Today I’m a grumpy guy with a spotty employment history and a giant chip on his shoulder.
Since walking away from my career in Naval Intelligence, I’ve had a plethora of jobs. I seem to have a real problem with keeping these jobs, however. Sometimes I get fed up with the people and simply cut loose. Other times I grow disillusioned with the entire concept of wage slavery, where I get to work for close to minimum wage so that the management and ownership of my employer can make big money, all the while being forced to call it my special, private piece of the “American Dream.” To me, that’s crap. I don’t mind starting out at the bottom, but there had better be room to grow or I’ll die off like a fragile and exotic plant.
Here’s the list, in the closest semblance of chronology that I can muster from memory, of my jobs post-Navy:
Intelligence Analyst; Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Washington D.C.
Navy Reservist; Fairfax, VA and Denver, CO
Customer Service; Lowes Home Improvement, Grand Junction, CO
Waiter and Bartender; Dos Hombres Restaurant, Grand Junction, CO
Student (full time); Mesa State College, Grand Junction, CO
Roustabout; Roustabout Specialties, Inc., Grand Junction, CO
Customer Service (phone center); StarTek, Inc., Grand Junction, CO
Security Officer; Foremost Response, Inc., Grand Junction, CO
Blogger and SEO Researcher; Allied Internet Inc., Denver, CO
Security Officer; Double Tree Hotel, Grand Junction, CO
Delivery Driver; American Rental Specialties, Grand Junction, CO
Electrician’s Apprentice; B & B Electric, Grand Junction, CO
I think that there were more actually, but I can’t recall specifically. The list is long enough though! After five years of being a committed and career minded sailor with the U.S. Navy, I entered the civilian world and began flopping around like a fish out of water. It’s odd really. I love my family and wouldn’t trade anything in the world for the experience of being father to my two wonderful children. But why can’t I seem to get my ducks in a row with respect to my career?
Anyway, the fact that I’m trying to publish a book about my five years in the Navy made the passing of this milestone seem all the more poignant to me. In theory I could write a second book about my five years as a civilian, except that nothing book-worthy has happened to me since I have left the military. I’m hoping very strongly that the publication of my book will lead to a committed career path for me, much like the Navy did. The world of writing is bigger than me, just as was the Navy back in 1998. I’m hoping that this sense of awe will keep me in check as I attempt to embark on the steadying of my life.
